Paramedic

This article is about the mechanoid added by the Biotech DLC. For colonists performing medical duties, see Doctoring.

A paramedic is a mechanoid added by the Biotech DLC that can perform doctoring duties, fight fires, and jump long distances.

Summary

As mechanoids, every paramedic is immune to fire, Flame and Heat damage, and temperature extremes, despite having Comfortable Temperatures defined. They have 100% Toxic Resistance and Toxic Environment Resistance, making them immune to toxic buildup, rot stink and other toxic effects. They do not need to eat, rest, and have no mood. They will be stunned by EMP attacks for a time proportional to the EMP damage inflicted and will "adapt" and rendered immune to further EMP strikes for 2,200 ticks (36.67 secs).

Work

Paramedics are light mechanoids, and require High mechtech to be researched. Mechs in count as a partial pawn in terms of raid points, and still contribute towards wealth.

They are created from a standard mech gestator with 100 Steel, 1 High subcore, taking up 1 bandwidth from a mechanitor. They take 1800 ticks to initially craft, and then it must gestate for 1 cycle. A dead paramedic can be resurrected for 25 steel and 1 gestation cycle so long as the corpse is extant.

Mechs under player control require power: paramedics use 10% of their power per day while active. If set to dormant self-charging, they instead recharge for +1% power / day, without pollution. They recharge in a mech recharger (constant 200W), for 50% power/day, creating 5 wastepacks whenever the recharger's waste is filled up.

Paramedics will do tasks under the Doctoring tab,^[Clarify] though can also feed prisoners.^{[Firefighting?]} Paramedics have an effective Medical skill of 10. They will rescue pawns before tending to them. They have a base Global Work Speed of 50% and have a base move speed 100% that of a human, equivalent to a pawn in plate armor.

Work Speed

The Medical Tend Speed of a paramedic is dependent on their Global Work Speed. Paramedics have a base global work speed of 50%. Being in range of a mech booster increases the work speed to 75%. Each control sublink installed in their Mechanitor increases the work speed by 6%, up to a maximum of +36%. Control Sublinks and mech boosters combined allow Paramedics to reach 111% Work Speed. Multiple mech boosters do not stack, and the bonus from control sublinks is not multiplied by mech boosters.

All values are for 50%+ lighting conditions.

Control Sublinks	Medical Tend Speed
Control Sublinks	Base	Mech Boosted
0	50%	75%
1	56%	81%
2	62%	87%
3	68%	93%
4	74%	99%
5	80%	105%
6	86%	111%

Abilities

When drafted, paramedics are capable of long jumping to any tile within a 15 tile radius, outside a 6 tile radius and within line of sight. Therefore, it can jump over rock chunks and fences, but not walls. There is a short 30 ticks (0.5 secs) warm-up before jumping. It cannot be hurt mid-jump, even by explosions directly under it, but can still get hit during a short warm-up before jumping. There is a 480 ticks (8 secs) cooldown after each jump.^[Verify] This ability can be used twice, then has an 8 game-hour cooldown. Unlike regular movement, the long jump can both be initiated and land outside of the mechanitor's command radius, with no restrictions so long as the mechanitor is not downed. Paramedics can carry a downed pawn with them during this jump.

They also have the ability to release a 3.5-tile radius burst of firefoam on command, putting out fires, preventing the spread of other fires, and reducing the flammability of pawns in the area to 0%. It takes 30 ticks (0.5 secs) to deploy, but then has a 300,000 ticks (5 in-game days) cooldown.

Analysis

Paramedics work slowly without a mech booster, so are often a poor choice to tend pawns in imminent danger of bleeding out. Although work speed can be increased, a healthy pawn with high Medical skill will always be superior in medical tend speed, medical tend quality, and medical surgery success chance. In tend speed particularly, a skill 2 pawn is faster than a base paramedic and a skill 12 pawn, or skill 6 pawn equipped with two archotech arms, is faster than the fastest possible paramedic. When triaging situations where numerous pawns are in need of medical attention, it is usually better to assign almost any human doctor to patients at risk of bleeding out, any remaining high skilled doctors to critical cases requiring tend quality, and leaving the paramedic any remainder.

Regardless of this major drawback, Paramedics do have some advantages over human doctors. They do not suffer from mental breakdowns, are immune to illnesses that human doctors are susceptible to, and only 'sleep' for 24 hours out of every 6 days. They can operate while your doctors are fighting, as the bandwidth they consume would not buy a combat mechanoid that would replace a human combatant, and they will help keep things manageable whenever a large group of pawns are injured or sick.

With a clean, well-lit hospital and a bed with a good surgery success chance factor, a paramedic can reach the 98% surgery success chance cap just like their human counterparts. They cannot clean their own hospitals, are slower to heal injuries caused by surgery failures, and rely much more on the quality of the hospital than high skill humans, but paramedics can still handle surgeries for your colony with reasonable reliability. If no doctors are above Medical 10, then the paramedic is the obvious choice as surgeon.

For day-to-day life, paramedics are capable of feeding prisoners^[Clarify] and resting patients, saving time for your active colonists.

You may want to group the paramedic with other combat mechanoids, keeping them dormant until a combat situation or disease outbreak occurs. Note that the mechanitor must be conscious to change Work Modes, so solo mechanitors should keep paramedics active, and consider having more than one.

With their firefoam pack and immunity to fire and heat, paramedics excel at firefighting and rescuing pawns from situations involving heat that would wound others.

Health

Specify body type when known.

Body part	Health
Head	25
Skull	25
Brain	10
Nose	10
Neck	25
Jaw	20
Eye ^[1] (left, right)	10
Ear (left, right)	10
Body	40
Kidney^[2] (left, right)	15
Lung^[2] (left, right)	15
Liver^[2]	20
Heart^[2]	15
Spine^[2]	25
Stomach^[2]	20
Limbs (left, right, fore, hind)	30
Appendage (left, right, fore, hind)	20

↑ Located inside of Head.
↑ ^2.0 ^2.1 ^2.2 ^2.3 ^2.4 ^2.5 Located inside of Body.

Version history

Biotech DLC Release - Added.
1.4.3541 - Fix: Paramedic mechs can't carry pawns while jumping.
1.4.3542 - Fix: Paramedic mechs can't carry pawns while jumping. It is unknown why this fix was/had to be implemented twice.

Mechanoids

Mechanoids | Core: Centipede (Blaster, Burner, Gunner) • Lancer • Pikeman • Scyther • Termite
Combat: Centurion • Legionary • Militor • Scorcher • Tesseron
Command: Apocriton • Diabolus • War queen (War urchin )
Labor: Agrihand • Cleansweeper • Constructoid • Fabricor • Lifter • Paramedic • Tunneler
Cluster | Buildings: Condition causer • Count-down activator • Mech assembler • Mech capsule • Mech drop beacon • Mech high-shield • Mech low-shield • Mech node • Proximity activator • Unstable power cell
Turrets: Auto charge turret • Auto inferno turret • Auto mortar • Mini-slugger turret
Creation | Pawn: Mechanitor
Buildings: Mech gestator • Large mech gestator • Mechband antenna • Mechband dish

[Head-1] Located inside of Head.

[Body-2] 2.0 ^2.1 ^2.2 ^2.3 ^2.4 ^2.5 Located inside of Body.

[1]

[2]